Mike Schultz: the man who created his own prosthesis from bicycle parts

This article was taken from the March 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

"Monster" Mike Schultz has won several medals at the X Games, on both snowmobiles and motorbikes. Impressive, right? Even more impressive: he won them wearing a prosthetic leg he built himself out of mountain-bike parts.

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Back in December 2008, Schultz became an extreme-sports cautionary tale. He charged to pass a competitor during a snowmobile race and his sled started bouncing, pitching him off. He hit the ground so hard it bent his left knee in the wrong direction. "I remember lying there, looking at the bottom of my boot on my chest," recalls the 31-year-old from Pillager, Minnesota.

The leg had to come off. Five weeks later, Schultz was fitted with a prosthesis. But as soon as he climbed back on to a snowmobile, he realised his new knee wasn't going to survive high-impact activity. He considered retiring, but when he heard that the summer 2009 X Games were adding an adaptive motocross race, he decided to build himself a better leg.

Schultz asked friends at a local R&D centre for mountain-bike maker Fox if he could use its parts and equipment to create a tougher prosthesis. He had no experience of machining, but he learned, and seven months after losing his leg, Schultz and his appendage, "the Moto Knee", entered the Moto X Racing Adaptive. He won silver. The next year, the X Games added Adaptive SnoCross and Schultz took gold. He hopes to do it again this year in Aspen, Colorado.

Schultz has started a business, Biodapt, which manufactures a variety of prosthetics designed to handle the wear and tear of action sports. One of his first customers was Keith Deutsch, a retired US Army sergeant who lost his right leg above the knee in an RPG attack in Iraq in 2003; he has since become a competitive adaptive snowboarder. Like Schultz, Deutsch was a talented athlete before he lost his leg. And also like Schultz, he hasn't let injury slow him down.